3rd Sunday after Pentecost          

Jeremiah 36:1-8

In the fourth year of King Jehoiakim son of Josiah of Judah, this word came to Jeremiah from God: Take a scroll and write on it all the words that I have spoken to you against Israel and Judah and all the nations, from the day I spoke to you, from the days of Josiah until today. It may be that, when the house of Judah hears of all the disasters that I intend to do to them, all of them may turn from their evil ways, so that I may forgive their iniquity and their sin.

Then Jeremiah called Baruch son of Neriah, and Baruch wrote on a scroll at Jeremiah’s dictation all the words that God had spoken to him. And Jeremiah ordered Baruch, saying, “I am prevented from entering the house of God, so you go, and on a fast day in the hearing of the people in God’s house you shall read the words of God from the scroll that you have written at my dictation. You shall read them also in the hearing of all the people of Judah who come up from their towns. It may be that their plea will come before God and that all of them will turn from their evil ways, for great is the anger and wrath that God has pronounced against this people.” And, Baruch son of Neriah did all that the prophet Jeremiah ordered him about reading from the scroll the words of God in the God’s house.

Jeremiah 36:21-23

Then the king sent Jehudi to get the scroll, and he took it from the chamber of Elishama the secretary, and Jehudi read it in the hearing of the king and all the officials who stood beside the king. Now the king was sitting in his winter apartment (it was the ninth month), and there was a fire burning in the brazier before him. As Jehudi read three or four columns, he would cut them off with a penknife and throw them into the fire in the brazier, until the entire scroll was consumed in the fire that was in the brazier.

Jeremiah 36:27-31

Now after the king had burned the scroll with the words that Baruch wrote at Jeremiah’s dictation, the word of God came to Jeremiah: Take another scroll and write on it all the former words that were in the first scroll, which King Jehoiakim of Judah has burned. And, concerning King Jehoiakim of Judah you shall say: Thus says our God, You have burned this scroll, saying, “Why have you written in it that the king of Babylon will certainly come and destroy this land and will cut off from it human beings and animals?” Therefore, thus says our God concerning King Jehoiakim of Judah: He shall have no one to sit upon the throne of David, and his dead body shall be cast out to the heat by day and the frost by night. And, I will punish him and his offspring and his servants for their iniquity; I will bring on them and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem and on the people of Judah all the disasters with which I have threatened them, but they would not listen.”

Bend Your Ears 

When I was a kid, my family had this electric space heater that was essentially just a shallow metal box standing on its side, with a grill on the front. It was about a foot and a half tall, and a foot and a half wide, maybe six inches deep, and when you turned it on, wire elements, like the inside of a toaster, would start to glow orange, and it would start radiating heat, almost immediately. Now, safety standards have changed a lot since then, I doubt very much that if this device was put in front of the Consumer Product Safety Commission today, that it would be approved, but we had used this thing for years, and we knew not to touch it when it was on.

This space heater lived in the bathroom, and during the winter, my siblings and I would use it pretty much every day, every time we took a bath, so that it would heat up the bathroom. One day, around the time that my youngest brother was probably three years-old, my sister was helping him to take a bath, and she had gotten him out of the tub, and gave him a towel, and set him in front of the heater to keep warm. I’m guessing it was a pretty cold day, because he was standing very close to the heater. He had the towel held up against the front of his body, and he had his naked backside facing the heater.

My sister told him not to get too close to the heater, or he would get burned. She told him! But, he was three, and he wasn’t paying as much attention to how close he was getting to the heater as he should have, and all of a sudden, there’s a yelp, and there’s chaos in the bathroom, and there’s a perfect set of grill marks on my brother’s little three year-old bottom, like a perfectly grilled piece of salmon.

He didn’t listen! She told him to be careful; she warned him! But, he didn’t listen, and he ended up with grill marks on his butt. If I remember correctly, it took almost two weeks for the grill marks to fade away.

A common theme in the Bible, as you know, is people not listening. We talk about it all the time. But, our reading today kind of takes this to the next level. The prophet Jeremiah isn’t even allowed to go to the temple because the priests are so tired of listening to him! They don’t want to hear what he has to say. They don’t want to hear his message from God, for them. I imagine that what he had been telling them was not something that was easy to hear, as is pretty much always the case when God is sending a prophet. But, as we know, ignoring your problems by sticking your head in the sand doesn’t actually make your problems go away.

So, since Jeremiah isn’t allowed to go to the temple, he sends his scribe Baruch, instead. Baruch reads the words that Jeremiah had dictated to him, hoping that the people would turn from their wicked ways. King Jehoiakim hears about this, and sends Jehudi to bring the scroll back to him. Now, here’s where things get even more wild, because we all know that this scroll contains the words spoken by Jeremiah, which were supposedly the words given to him by God! Jehudi read the scroll for the king, and after each section, King Jehoiakim had Jehudi cut off the part he had just read, and drop it into the fire. Read, cut, burn. Read, cut, burn. I mean, it was pretty much as strong of a message that the king could possibly send to Jeremiah, and ultimately to God, that he didn’t care what they had to say. He was really feeling himself. He was being extremely brave, braver than he had any right to be, and I don’t know why exactly, but it just feels so petty, to me. Then, he tries to have Jeremiah and Baruch, arrested, but God hides them, and they get away.

The story continues, and it really reads like some kind of schoolyard argument bickering thing, because God tells Jeremiah to get a new scroll, and write down the exact same words that were on the scroll that King Jehoiakim had burned, and to tell him that “his dead body shall be cast out to the heat by day and the frost by night. And, I will punish him and his offspring and his servants for their iniquity; I will bring on them and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem and on the people of Judah all the disasters with which I have threatened them, but they would not listen.”

There’s an interesting note in verse 22, that “the King was sitting in his winter apartment,” because it was the ninth month. We already know that the king was a wealthy person, that’s just how it is with kings, but it’s little details like this that really help us to understand and give us context. King Jehoiakim was so far removed from the common people; how many of them do you think had multiple homes? He didn’t understand them, not really, and when he hears these warnings about Babylon coming to destroy them, it seems like he thinks he’s untouchable. He is so secure in his power that he doesn’t listen to God’s warnings.

People do not like being told that they have to change what they’re doing, that they have to change their way of life, that they have to give up what they’re used to. We are being told this right now. We are burning too many fossil fuels, we are using too much water, we are putting too many chemicals into our environment, we are being unjust to huge segments of the population, not just here in the United States, but all over the world.

These things happening in the Middle East, things that we either support or things that we have done directly, they are unjust. And, the people are crying out, but we are not listening, or at least, not enough of us are. And, so people continue to suffer. People continue to die. And, we are creating an environment of hate and resentment that will one day reach back across the ocean to hit us back. “I will punish him and his offspring and his servants for their iniquity.”

Now, I don’t think it’s fair to punish children for the sins of their parents; it’s not their fault that their ancestors did what they did. And, the servants? Even the servants are being punished for the actions of their employers? But, that’s how it works. Think about what’s happening now. If we destroy the earth, if relations break down between nations, if economies crumble, it’s not just us in our current day who will suffer. It will be our offspring, our children, the generations that come after us. And it won’t just be the people who perpetrated these acts, it will be the farm workers, the factory workers, people in the service industry; everyone will suffer if we continue on the path that we are on right now.

There are so many people telling us to stop, that this isn’t the way that things should be. Millions of people have taken to the streets to say that we need to care about our neighbors, that we need to care about the health of our planet, that we need to deal with other nations justly. People are standing up because they can see where this is all going, and it isn’t good.

But, the fact that there are so many people standing up should give us hope. Sure, not everyone is listening to the warnings, but a lot of us are. And, more and more people are speaking out and listening every day. This is the work of the Holy Spirit, God’s work of bending the arc of history towards justice. There are over 8 billion of us on the planet. Think about all of that potential. Yes, we have seen the destruction that 8 billion people are capable of, but the potential for greatness is there, as well. And, we have done a great many great things. We have figured out how to transplant organs from one person to another. Swedish scientists have figured out how to make transparent wood that could one day replace glass, and a woman in Mexico has figured out how to make edible, biodegradable plastic out of cactus. We have gone to the moon. So, let us heed the warnings, and not get burned. Let us bend our ears towards justice, and our hands towards greatness. And, let us be the people that God created us to be. Amen.

~ Rev. Charles Wei